Young women facing long odds are benefiting from a unique partnership between Bard College and The Care Center in Holyoke.
Bard brought its innovative approach to teaching the liberal arts in unlikely settings to the center that for three decades has provided a path out of poverty for pregnant and parenting teens. The union produced Bard Microcollege Holyoke, the first such institution in the country for low-income women whose educations were delayed by pregnancy and parenting.
When the microcollege opened last August, it accepted 25 of the 60 applicants who had graduated from The Care Center’s high school equivalency program. Bard faculty provide the same rigorous approach to liberal arts — focused on writing, close reading and critical thinking in disciplines ranging from the humanities to math and sciences — found at the institution’s main campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
When they complete the two-year program, the women earn an associate degree from Bard. The education is tuition-free thanks to a combination of federal Pell grants and fundraising by The Care Center, including from foundations and local donors.
Among the microcollege’s first students is Angelique Vera, 25, of Holyoke, who says she has been battling stereotypes since she was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder in high school. She dropped out of Holyoke High School at 16 after she got pregnant.
“That compounded the idea I had somehow diminished in intelligence and potential,” Vera says. “There were so many times I felt I would have been validated in giving up and looking for a trade program and accepting the stereotype — the stereotype that society at large has for young mothers. It really says give up on your education and find a way to support your children. It was The Care Center that told me that’s not an option, that getting our education, our degrees, is supporting our children.”
The young women — most are Latina and all receive social services — juggle their parenting responsibilities as they attend Bard seminars where they talk through topics like philosopher G.W.F. Hegel’s theory of progress.
“The amount of obstacles these women are facing every day is kind of mind-boggling – these are students that pretty much everyone has written off. Poverty is pretty violent,” says Anne Teschner of Florence, executive director of The Care Center.
The center decided to offer its network of support in partnership with Bard after determining that many of its graduates struggled in traditional colleges, according to Teschner. “We found 75 percent of our grads go to college — this is good. But only 15 percent were graduating. So we said, ‘OK, this is not the point.’”
Bard brings success in outside-the-box thinking about college education, including its prison initiative which since 2001 has awarded 430 degrees to inmates in New York state. It also has a network of early colleges, which students enter while still in high school, based on Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington.
We hope the microcollege in Holyoke becomes a model for helping young mothers from an impoverished background achieve the success they want for themselves and their families.